Introducing Analog

Just before Christmas, a few friends and I launched a new company, Analog. Writing this, I’m still a little surprised at the praise from all those generous people about the holding page. After all, to me, analog.coop is just that: a little holding page. We did work hard on it and laughed a lot after the easter eggs started to appear. (Have you found all three, yet?) Then, we kept on laughing every time we saw them — a good sign. However, we never felt like the copy was quite right, and know we have more to do. Maybe that illustrates why I’m still chuffed a couple of weeks later.

We stand on the shoulders of those who’ve come before, but we also lean on the shoulders of those around us. That simple truth is why I believe in collaboration, and co-ops in particular, and why Analog exists. It’s a company of friends.

Analog is a change of tempo in a co-operative playlist that started a long time ago for me. I’m not sure where it began but I’m pretty sure it was way before I actually knew what a co-op was. (That is, apart from the Co-op supermarket near my Nan’s house.) Back in the early ’90s, running club nights and working behind the plates, I always ended up doing stuff with other people. I’d invite veteran jazz musicians to jam over the beats, with a mic plugged into the mixer. I almost always worked with other DJs. It was always so much more fun to have other people around. A friend who worked in a print shop was indispensable when I was designing flyers back in 1992. I remember designing a comp on a piece of paper. It was a logomark with a bit of copy. In the print shop we printed lines of text at different weights in different fonts, cut out the bits we liked, and stuck them into place with spray mount. We photographed the layout, and made a plate to print from. We chose the card together, and the dark silver ink. I would never have used either without my friend’s knowledge and help.

Fast forward a bit to the early part of the ‘noughties’, and realising how working collaboratively across disciplines was so critical for web sites, I founded Grow Collective. I think of it as a test run for Analog. What it proved to me is that the co-operative principles made sense, and turned me into something of an evangelist. I believe that everyone working on a project should profit equitably from it according to the scope of their participation. I believe we should have the right to claim our own work irrevocably, without suffering the indignity of being white-labelled. (It still happens.) I believe that working for nothing in order to secure clients is daft, and reject the notion that designing ‘on spec’ has any benefit whatsoever for anyone involved. I believe that there are other choices than working either for an agency, or freelance. I believe that if democracy and freedom are important to us, then they shouldn’t be signed away when we take a job.

It seems that everyone reaches a certain stage (or is that age) when the security of being an employee compares badly with the quality of life that independence can bring. I attach great value to being able to decide where the lines are drawn between profitability and quality; between when to rest and when to work; between what to do, how to do it, and who with. It’s a question of happiness. If independence is directly linked to happiness, but collaboration is the catalyst that makes good ideas work, a co-operative is an obvious choice, and Analog is my answer. I think it has all of the benefits of independence but a structure that could compete with the brand equity of agencies. It’s an hypothesis that is still unproven, but I believe in it. It feels right.

Of course, the members of a co-op are all-important. If I may, I’d like to introduce you to my colleagues:

Alan Colville is a veteran user experience designer. He’s worked both sides of the fence as the customer experience guy for large companies like BT, and a user experience design consultant for Blackberry, Vodafone, and Visa. If ever there was someone who understands design thinking as well as design doing, it is he. He’s a serious man on a mountain bike, too!

Andrei Zmievski is the former open source fellow at Digg. He was previously a platform engineer at Yahoo, and is a core developer of PHP. He co-wrote PHP Developer’s Cookbook, and is the architect of the Unicode and internationalization support in PHP 6. If there’s a technical conference somewhere, the chances are Andrei’s giving a talk. Oh, and boy, does this guy know his craft beer.

Chris Shiflett wrote the HTTP Developer’s Handbook, and PHP Security, as well as having numerous articles and other book contributions to his name. He’s given talks at the best developer conferences for a decade, combining the sensibilities of a designer with the rigor of an engineer. He’s also pretty decent with a (real) football, too (for an American).

Jon Gibbins used to develop accessible music software for people with disabilities. He’s the best accessibility researcher I know — formerly an admin at GAWDS and moderator of Accessify forum — and a priceless interface engineer to boot (every designer should know one). After calmly wrestling with browsers for years, he can still play a mean guitar today.

These guys are some of the best people I know. Not just in their work, but personally, too. When we wrote ‘good people, good work’ in our opening paragraph on the Analog site, it was a manifesto rather than a statement. Leaning on their shoulders has already given us great fun with JavaScript and CSS (the Analog easter eggs), with GeoIP, the Twitter API, and our little #grid. All of them can be seen on the Analog holding page. I’m proud of the work we’ve done already, and we’ve barely started. Sitting here in a lounge chair at home, with my feet up, and Ommwriter soothing my ears and eyes, I’m smiling to myself at the thought of things to come. Remembering some of the kind words people have said, I’m pulling that wry face we sometimes get when the praise of others is humbling, warm, but still a little embarrassing. Thank you if you’re one of them.

After a brief excursion to wrestle a three-year-old (involuntarily), I guess I should wrap this up. I don’t know how this Analog gig will play out. Sometimes, back in the early 90s, I would often start with familiar tracks that I and the audience knew and loved. After a while, I always had an urge to try and play something different. Maybe an accapella over an ancient break-beat, or the intense Pao De Acucar from Pacific Jam. Analog is one of those gigs.

If you fancy keeping up with how we do, follow analogcoop. If you’d like to work with us, please get in touch. If anyone has questions about co-operatives, feel free to ask, or keep an eye out for follow-up entries. One of them is sure to be about how to form an international co-op, as well a bits about the brand, the site, and things I’ve learnt so far.

So I guess this is the reason for your absence in writing new blog posts, huh? :D

Congratulation! Nice one-page-style site you have there. I wish a great success for Analog in 2010. I really like your GeoIP implementation to welcome visitors, I think I’d like to try that too next time. :D

Congratulations! I think co-operatives are overlooked and will be watching you closely to see how this works out.

I believe that everyone working on a project should profit equitably from it according to the scope of their participation.

I agree entirely with your sentiment, but the stumbling block every time I’ve proposed this with others has been - how do we “measure the scope of everyone’s participation”? By the hour worked doesn’t cut it, neither does line of code. What metric have you come up with to share the profit from each job?

Time can work for this simple reason: If people respect one another enough to work together, it should be easy to mutually agree that everyone’s time is equally valuable. Of course, this also extends to external time spent on activities like finding, securing, and administering work, as well as actual lines of code, or pixels placed. The only issue that remains is the common rate. However, we may not do it that way. We may concentrate on charging per project, using a waterfall approach to start with, but able to incorporate an agile switch (and fee adjustment) if required as scope changes. I’ll post more when we know more.

Hmm, my comment got lost. Suffice it to say that both the Analog site and this blog are fantastically designed. It’s the first I’ve learned of any of you guys and your design endeavors but your work is top notch and I have no doubt your endeavors will be successful.

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The documentation contains information for designers looking to prepare fonts for use on the web.

I’ve been following Analog since you launched, but only just read this blog which was very interesting. You mentioned you may write something regarding setting up an international co-op. I would be very interested in reading about that and how you structure yourselves within the co-op (i.e. who works on each project and how profits are shared and costs covered). We currently operate more as a traditional agency, but I feel a co-op might work well and empower people more.

Footnotes

This simple dish was created with a little xHTML, a dash of CSS and a pinch of PHP. It’s garnished with hAtom, hCalendar, XFN, hCard and rel-tag with a large slice of accessible intent. Hopefully it plays nicely, all the time.